Italy 60s-70s
Articles about the mass social upheaval and class struggle in Italy in the 1960s and 70s, sometimes referred to as the "creeping May ".
1977: The Bologna uprising
A very brief outline of the seizure of Bologna by workers and students in 1977, and the run-up to it following the shooting of a demonstrator.
Autonomia!
Italy 1977 saw a spontaneous and creative outbreaks of rebellion demonstrating that the potential for revolution still exists in the working class of the industrialised west - no matter what the lefty cynics say.
1958-1990: Operation Gladio, Italy
The history of the secret neo-fascist army in Italy set up ostensibly to resist Soviet invasion, but in reality to be used in the event of the working class growing too strong once again.
Following the end of World War II, the Italian workers’ movement was rapidly gaining strength. In some towns the fascists had been kicked out by Resistance forces (as before the war, these were usually led by socialists and anarchists), and embryonic workers’ councils were governing.
1969-?: The Strategy of Tension in Italy
Information about the Italian state's "Strategy of Tension" policy in which it carried out terrorist attacks against its own people in order to blame the left and anarchists.
1971: Via Tibaldi occupation
A short history of an occupation of empty housing in Italy by workers who had inadequate accomodation. Their direct action and solidarity forced the council to house hundreds of people.
The occupation at Via Tibaldi was a great step forward for the tenants’ and homeless movement in Italy. A whole neighbourhood was involved in it : factories, schools, housing projects took part in the organising of the struggle. There was a victory at Via Tibaldi because everyone there was fully aware
1971: The Quarto Oggiaro occupation
A short history of a militant mass occupation of empty housing in Milan, Italy, 1971 which pressured the government to give in and provide the participating families with housing.
Quarto Oggiaro is a working class quarter of Milan in northern Italy. Many Italians had been forced to leave the poverty of the south to try to find work in the industrialised north, and there found pay low. Housing was scarce, and where it did exist much was wretchedly sub-standard.
1971: The people's clinic, Rome
The history of the residents in one of Rome's outlying ghettos who had inadequate health care provision. Seizing a government building, they and sympathetic health workers set up their own medical centre and ran it collectively.
In Italy in 1960s and 70s San Basilio, one of Rome’s outlying ghetto areas, a movement was developing of people fighting against their lousy, inhuman living conditions. There were 40,000 people trapped in this slum district. In the previous few months about 100 families had been on rent strike. This started as a spontaneous protest, and was becoming more organised.
In the Shell of the Old - Italy's Social Centres
Article from the 1990s containing information about Italy's movement of political squats called "social centres."
[b]Living In The Heart Of The Beast - Italy's Social Centres[/b]
Every May Day since 1986, Forte Prenestino in Rome has hosted the 'Festival of Non-Labour'.
Through music, videos, theatre, good food, and debate, its occupants celebrate not only the coming of Spring, but the ongoing efforts of people like themselves to challenge and overturn the rhythms of capital and the state.
Take over the city - Community struggle in Italy, 1973
Excellent article from Lotta Continua about different struggles of workers in their local areas. It covers self-reduction of prices, squatting and more.
Translated and edited by Ernest Dowson
Radical America, Vol.7 no.2, March-April 1973
Translator's Preface
The limits of Negri's class analysis: Italian autonomist theory in the seventies - Steve Wright
Steve Wright's critical analysis of Negri's ideas.
From Reconstruction 8 (Winter/Spring 1996)
Over the past decade, Toni Negri's association with Deleuze and Guattari has made his name well known to English-language readers of radical thought. But as STEVE WRIGHT shows, Negri's most distinctive ideas would first be debated within the Italian revolutionary movement of the seventies.
The historiography of the mass worker - Steve Wright
Steve Wright's historical study of the development of the mass worker across the world and the effect it had on working class struggle.
This article by Steve Wright appeared in The Commoner, No.5, in 2002. It is also reproduced here in its original pdf format (100kb).
The Historiography of the Mass Worker
(Chapter 8 of Storming Heaven: Class composition and struggle in Italian autonomist marxism)
